Saturday, February 23, 2013

Lazy Linkage Post

Whether or not the Pixel can actually sell in any significant numbers is an, as yet, unanswered question. Pichai wouldn’t disclose specific sales numbers for any Chromebooks, but he said he believes that the appetite for a high-end Chromebook is there, noting that since Google and Samsung launched their $250 Chromebook 125 days ago, that specific computer has been the best selling laptop on Amazon every single day.

“This is targeted for a segment of users who have committed to the cloud,” he said of the $1,300 Pixel. “We believe we’ve built the best laptop from a hardware standpoint.”

"In [Argo], Canada and Ottawa didn't exist," [former Canadian ambassador to Iran] Taylor told the New York Times' Carpetbagger blog. "It's a great film, it's great. But at the same time, it was a Canadian story that's been, all of sudden, totally taken over by the Americans. Totally."

"I don't want to be hard on Tony Mendez," he added, referencing the CIA agent played by Affleck who led the covert op. "I want to give him all the credit I can. But at the same time, I'm a Canadian, and enough is enough."

Taylor also told the Associated Press today that it would be "a further reflection" on Affleck if Argo wins Best Picture and he fails to thank the Canadians who played such a huge role in the real-life version of events.

Researchers using text-analysis software say they've discovered a new literary device in the first book of the Bible: the "Genesis death sandwich."

The name refers to a familiar rhetorical structure -- sandwiching bad news in between the good. In the case of Genesis, the slices of white bread are themes of life, and the slimy cold cuts in between are mentions of death.

"The structuring of life and death in Genesis appears to be something that hasn't been noticed before," researcher Gordon Rugg, a senior lecturer in Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a Feb. 21 blog post. "We think it's a standard literary device being used on a larger scale than had been previously realized. No aliens, no secret codes, no conspiracies, but some striking images, and a great name for a band."

The interesting thing about "The Cloud" is not how it delivers software, but rather how it decouples compute capabilities from capital expenditures. An organization seeking to make discoveries no longer has to spend millions of dollars on a supercomputer or ten thousand blade servers, but can rather just turn on that compute capability, use it and turn it off.

If you can't get excited about the immediate and nearly infinite availability of compute resources you're really not seeing the future...